quickly, that Derring’s life was being dismantled because he owned none of it.
The shock. The shame.
She leaned her aching head against the cool carriage window.
She’d likely return to a townhouse of dead fires and unlit stoves and dark chandeliers.
The staff would, quite pragmatically, flee if they hadn’t already with their satchels of belongings (but hopefully not the silver), confident of being absorbed into other fine households, because Delilah had a particular skill for hiring the very best staff.
With the exception of Dorothy. Delilah had taken on Dorothy as a lady’s maid—such a sweet girl, all shy smiles and eagerness to please—in a fit of outraged mercy when she’d been dismissed without references by the Duchess of Brexford. But a few years with Dorothy had brought Delilah closer to an understanding of martyrdom. Dot burned, spilled, dropped, and broke things. Daily. She tried so very hard and meant so very well and yet she revealed a talent for nothing except cheerful devotion. Delilah hadn’t the heart to let her go.
What would become of Dorothy?
Or of Mrs. Helga, the magically talented cook, warm of heart and loud of laugh, who was the heartbeat of the kitchen? Her apple tarts and lemon seed cakes and rich sauces were the stuff of heaven. Countesses and duchesses would wrestle in a pit of mud in the middle of Almack’s for the services of a cook like that.
And what about me?
Thank God her parents were now dead, she thought mordantly. They would not have to witness this or experience poverty again.
Should she throw herself on the mercy of Derring’s nephew, who would inherit the family estate? Should she write to her cousins in America to ask if they could use an additional relative to feed? Her mind recoiled from every option it touched on, recoiled from all of her options.
Perhaps this was why their circle of acquaintances, and even women she’d considered friends—like Lady Ragland and Lady Corvalle, women with whom she’d dined and shopped and gossiped—had seemed to subtly fan away from her after Derring’s funeral, like fleas disembarking from a dead dog. They’d all known. A little debt was one thing. Penury was quite another, she supposed.
The scorching shame of it.
She shifted her reticule in her lap and the great wad of keys jingled.
She poured them out into her hand and as she did, the crumpled message tumbled out with it.
She’d forgotten she’d stuffed it in there.
After a hesitation, she smoothed it out and read it again in the carriage’s dim light.
And now she understood why she’d kept it.
Because there was something indomitable about it. A sort of dry, worldly wit that wasn’t without sympathy. It included Delilah in the joke. Inherent in it was the assumption that Delilah was that sort of woman, too: Strong. Mordant. Resilient.
Was she?
If she had loved her husband this revelation of—betrayal? Humiliation? Neither word truly fit, if she was being honest, and all she wanted, for the rest of her life, was to be honest, to be who she truly was—might have been the undoing of her.
How odd to regret that she wasn’t undone by the knowledge of her husband’s mistress.
Her pride was scorched. But scorched pride seemed the least of her concerns.
And it seemed she hadn’t known her husband at all, because he hadn’t seen fit to let himself be known.
Then again, he hadn’t truly known her, either.
Which might very well be the only reason he’d ever married her at all.
When they arrived in Grosvenor Square, the door of their townhouse was propped open, and two snickering men were ferrying out a mostly nude statue. Daphne becoming a laurel tree to get away from Apollo.
Lucky Daphne, Delilah thought, to have such an appealing option. At least she knew how she’d be spending eternity.
“Jamesy, why is a woman made of stone better than a real woman?” One of the men was bellowing over his shoulder to his friend.
“Why, Jonesy?”
“Her nips are already—”
They saw her and clapped their mouths closed.
She gave them the icy, quelling look they deserved.
Derring had filled a gallery with those statues, many of them all but naked, all pectorals and penises and nipples and curving buttocks and aquiline noses, and quite expensive, so uncharacteristically sensual a collection for a man as rigid as Derring. Of some ordinary stone, not marble or alabaster, they ought to have been in a garden somewhere, she’d always thought.
And there they were, lined up to be loaded into carts like so many shamed orgy attendees.
In broad daylight.
She could practically feel